Every week in synagogue, Jews read a portion from the Torah followed by a selection from the Prophets called the haftarah. The haftarah is meant to complement or illuminate the Torah reading, creating a dialogue between the two texts. But sometimes the choice of haftarah reveals something unexpected—not just about the Torah portion, but about the prophetic text itself.
Consider the Torah portion of Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1). While Ashkenazi Jews read a passage from Isaiah as the haftarah, Sephardic Jews—those whose families trace their roots to Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East—read Jeremiah Chapter 1, the same text read on the first Shabbat after the 17th of Tammuz, marking the beginning of the three sad weeks leading to Tisha B’Av and the commemoration of the destruction of the Temple.
On the one hand, this choice makes sense. Both Moses in Shemot and Jeremiah in his first chapter are reluctant prophets, chosen by God and initially resisting their divine calling before eventually accepting their missions. When God appears to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus chapters 3-4), Moses protests repeatedly: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” He claims he’s not eloquent, that the people won’t listen to him, that God should send someone else. Similarly, when God calls Jeremiah, the young prophet responds, “I cannot speak, for I am only a youth” (Jeremiah 1:6). Both men feel inadequate to the task, both question their own worthiness, and both need divine reassurance before accepting their roles. The parallel between the two narratives seems obvious enough—two great leaders of Israel, each hesitant to embrace the burden of prophecy.
But that appears to be the only similarity. Moses was called to redeem Israel from Egypt, a message of liberation and hope. Jeremiah, by contrast, was appointed to prophesy the destruction of the Temple, hence the choice to read it during the “three weeks”. One prophet announces redemption, the other announces catastrophe. In addition, Moses stands alone among all prophets, as God himself declares in Numbers Chapter 12, a uniqueness that Maimonides enshrined in one of the thirteen principles of faith. Why would Sephardic Jews connect these two figures in the haftarah reading?
Rabbi Haim Jachter explains that to answer this question, we need to look more carefully at Jeremiah’s actual mission. In Jeremiah 1:10 God declares:
The final words, “to build and to plant,” change everything. Jeremiah wasn’t sent merely to announce catastrophe. He was sent to prepare the people for what comes after. His mission included destruction, yes, but it equally included restoration.
This is the prophet who promises that “the children will return to their borders” (Jeremiah 31:16). This is the voice that presents Rachel weeping inconsolably for her exiled children, and then God’s response, assuring her they will come home. This is the same Jeremiah who reveals in Chapter 29 that seventy years after the Babylonian exile, return becomes possible, the promise we celebrate on Chanukah when, after lighting the candles, we sing Ma’oz Tzur: “At the conclusion of seventy years I was saved.”
The portion of the haftarah itself doesn’t end with doom. Its closing verses from Jeremiah 2 speak of an enduring covenant:
Even while announcing exile, Jeremiah affirms that the relationship between God and Israel survives destruction.
This reveals the deeper parallel between Moses and Jeremiah. Both prophets, despite their different historical moments, serve the same ultimate purpose: they are harbingers of redemption. Moses led the people out of Egypt. Jeremiah promised they would return from Babylon. Different exiles, different prophets, but the same divine pattern: God redeems His people.
When Sephardic Jews read Jeremiah alongside the Exodus story, they’re making a statement about Jewish history. The God who brought us out of Egypt is the same God who will bring us back from every exile. Just as Moses’s prophecy of liberation was fulfilled, so too will Jeremiah’s prophecy of ultimate redemption be realized.
Perhaps this is why both Moses and Jeremiah initially resisted their callings. They understood the weight of speaking for God. But maybe they also glimpsed the paradox they would embody—Moses beginning a journey that would take centuries to complete, Jeremiah announcing an ending that was simultaneously a beginning.
Jeremiah continued Moses’s work, translating the Exodus paradigm into a promise for a people facing destruction. One prophet stands at the start of the redemption story in the wilderness of Sinai. The other stands amid its rupture in the ruins of Jerusalem. But both point toward the same horizon.
This transforms how we read Jeremiah. He’s not merely a prophet of doom whose predictions came true. He’s a prophet whose vision extends beyond the immediate catastrophe to the restoration that follows. His tears over Jerusalem’s destruction are inseparable from his promises of return. When we read Moses and Jeremiah together, we’re reminded that Jewish history moves in cycles. Jeremiah promises that the redemption that Moses began will continue, and that the final redemption is on its way.
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